Three stories by a French masterFirst published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness, and religious experience—together they confirm Flaubert as a master of the short story. “A Simple Heart” relates the story of Félicité, an uneducated serving-woman who retains her …

In A Simple Heart, the poignant story that inspired Julian Barnes' Flaubert’s Parrot, Félicité, a French housemaid, approaches a lifetime of servitude with human-scaled but angelic aplomb. No other author has imparted so much beauty and integrity to so modest an existence. Flaubert's "great saint" endures loss after …

Jacques Barzun's masterful translation proves that Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas―an acid catalogue of the clichés of 19th-century France―is as relevant today as ever. Throughout his life Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the cliché, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the …